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Seward County’s health plan called unsustainable; commissioners weigh self‑funding, benchmarking
Summary
Commissioners and an outside consultant discussed that county health benefits and employer premium shares are high and may be unsustainable; staff will have IMA/broker benchmarking and explore options including harmonized deductibles, shared purchasing and partial self‑funding.
Commissioners at a Jan. 9 Seward County work session were told the county’s employee health benefits are unusually costly and may not be sustainable.
"The taxpayers are paying $2,500 per month per employee on the family plan," the chair said during discussion of the county’s premium structure and who pays what. An outside consultant, Dave Traubart of the Kansas Policy Institute, urged benchmarking of benefits and pay to understand whether high benefits are compensating for lower wages or recruiting needs.
Traubart described options county officials are considering: continuing the grandfathered plan while offering a higher employee share or moving to new plan designs, harmonizing deductibles if the county joins a larger pool, using a broker like IMA to test the market, or exploring partial self‑funding and intergovernmental purchasing. “Try to look at all of your spending and break it into 3 buckets,” Traubart said, framing benefits as one of the largest buckets for review.
Staff noted the county currently maintains grandfathered status under its Blue Cross arrangement, which constrains how much the plan can be changed without losing that status. Commissioners discussed that changing to a lower‑premium plan by raising deductibles could still leave the county facing large cost swings—one scenario discussed showed deductible increases would only modestly reduce county cost while cutting benefits for employees.
The county’s broker and the IMA benchmarking study are expected to provide more precise numbers and comparisons to similar governments; staff said the broker will present findings in February. Commissioners also discussed cooperative approaches, such as a shared clinic with a local college and pooling employees across local governments to gain negotiating leverage.
The county will consider the benchmarking and broker recommendations as part of the follow‑up budget work session scheduled for Jan. 20.
